Monday, 18 June 2012

Washington DC in the Summertime

As I mentioned in my post last week I was fortunate enough to visit Washington DC a week or so back. The main purpose of the visit was business but Mrs Ellis came with me and after the work was done we had a little time to see some of the sites before returning home.

My business commitments kept us in Reston, a suburb of DC, for most of the week but on the weekend we travelled down to downtown DC and we got to see some of the sights

The UK summer has lived up to its reputation and when flew out of Heathrow it was raining and the temperature was around 14C. When we landed in Dulles we found glorious sunshine and temperatures of 30C plus. This was to remain all week.

We arrived in downtown DC Saturday morning we had an early check-in so we were able to drop our bags in the room and head out for the day. We stayed at the JW Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue or America’s Main Street. This was a pretty cool location with lots of things to see close by, we stepped out of the hotel and after a short walk up 14th street you were greeted with this view

We started out walking up the Mall toward the capitol building with a visit to National Gallery. I must state here I’m not an art buff or indeed know don’t know much about art at all but even I recognised many of the paintings hanging in this gallery and you couldn’t fail to be impressed.

There was paints by Claude Monet

Paul Cezanne

Vincent Van Gogh’s self portrait

And works from other many many artists.

We took in several of the museums that you kind find on the Mall too including the Air and Space museum the Museum of Native Americans and the Natural History Museum. All were very impressive.

We also had time to check out the White House. As I was stood there taking the photo you can see below, a little lad, must have been about 9-10 years turned to his mother and said, “Mommy, he [President Obama] must be home, the lights are on.” Well it made me laugh, maybe you had to be there

We also got to visit Arlington Cemetery, what a special place that is. Pretty amazing.

All in all we had a great trip. There is a decent chance I’ll be visiting Washington DC again this year, probably later in the autumn I don’t think I’ll have time to see much on that trip but we’ll see.

I spent the remainder of my summer in Egypt which was even hotter. Glad to be back in DC where it is just starting to cool down. Maybe one more week and it will start to be prime time for great weather.